Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“Maybe it’s best we ride east,” said Sanglant finally as Fulk and Heribert listened. “Sapientia will not like this news of our father’s marriage to Queen Adelheid.”

“It’s a long road to the east,” observed Heribert.

“All roads are long roads.” Blessing had fallen asleep on his chest. He bundled her up in the sling, off the ground so no crawling creature could bite her. The others rolled themselves up in their blankets. From farther off he heard sentries pacing on their rounds, their footfalls light on packed earth. He could not sleep. His hand still smarted from the prick of the thistle.

Jerna’s aetherical form fluttered down beside him, rippling like water. She curled herself as a veil of protection around the sleeping bundle that was Blessing. Perhaps, like an amulet, she did protect the baby. Blessing had not taken sick for even one day since Jerna began suckling her, nor was the baby troubled by fly or mosquito bites like the rest of them. Hot sun did not make her dusky skin break out in a rash, nor did she seem to mind the cold. She was growing so fast that every man there knew it was uncanny and abnormal, although none spoke a word out loud.

Maybe he was a fool for letting an abomination nurse her. Perhaps it wasn’t wise. But what else could he have done? He had made the only choice open to him.

So be it.

3

AS King Henry’s army lurched and toiled up the pass, Rosvita found herself for the fifth time that day at a standstill behind a wagon. This one had gotten stuck where its wheels had broken through an icy crust to bog down in mud beneath.

Fortunatus reined his mule up beside hers, and sighed. “Do you think it was wise of King Henry to cross the mountains this late in the year?”

“Speak no ill of the king, I pray you, Brother. He marches at God’s bidding. You see, the sun still shines.”

So it did, however bleak and wan its light seemed against a backdrop of dark clouds, cold mountainside, and a cutting wind. Soldiers and servants hurried forward with planks and sticks to coax the wagon out of its mire. Soon a dozen of them had gathered around the stricken wagon, arguing with each other in the tone of men who have had their endurance tested to the limit.

“Shall I speak to them, Sister?”

“Nay, let them be unless it comes to a fistfight. But you may take the reins of my mule, if you please.” As she had done the other times they had halted in this manner, she dismounted from her mule to give a few words of comfort to a wagon’s load of soldiers so stricken with the flux that they were too weak to walk.

“Let us pray, friends,” she said as she approached the wagon, although in truth most of the soldiers were too delirious with fever to hear her words. The wagon stank of their illness, for these were the poor souls who no longer had the strength to hoist themselves off the wagon and stagger off the path before voiding their bowels.

It took her perhaps four steps to walk from her mule to the wagon. Only for that long did she turn her back to the pass up which the army struggled.

The wagon driver had a cloth tied over most of his face to mask the stench of sickness, but even so, she saw his eyes widen in terror as he looked past her. She heard it first as a rumble, a crackling thrumming roar that obliterated distant shrieks and warning calls.

“Sister!” cried Fortunatus. “Ai, God, we are overtaken!”

She turned back. She hadn’t turned away for longer than it would take to count to ten, but in that brief span the sun had vanished under a curtain of white descending off the mountains. For an instant, the sight so disoriented her that she imagined them overwhelmed by a deluge of white flower petals.

The blizzard hit without warning. She had time only to grab at the wagon’s side, to brace herself. Fortunatus flung himself down from his mount and yanked on the reins of her mule. Then the storm swallowed him, and smashed into her.

She could not even hear the moans of the ill soldiers. Wind lashed her and snow blasted her. Pebbles caught up by the wind peppered her back as though a giant was hurling them against its enemies. She groped her way along the wagon until she shouldered up against the protecting bulk of the oxen. Luckily, she wore gloves, but even so her fingers stiffened where they clutched at wood and harness. She had to keep her back to the wind in order to breathe.

For an endless time, as the warmth ebbed out of her, she just held on.

By the time the wind slackened enough that she dared look up, snow drifted knee-deep around her legs and her feet had gone numb. Through the furious snow she could barely make out shapes staggering along the road. They were no longer marching south, up the pass toward Aosta. Now they fled north, down the pass, back the way they had come.